Garden Planner

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Frequently Asked Questions

Free Trial and Subscription

Q. Is it really free to use the Garden Planner?A. Yes, for 7 days you get the fully working version of our Garden Planner. You can create one plan and all the advanced features such as crop spacing and scheduling are available. There is no obligation to subscribe at the end of your free trial and we do not require any financial details unless you decide to subscribe ($29 per year).

Q. Why should I subscribe if I can just sign up for the 7 day free trial?A. Subscribing enables you to create up to five plans per year. You can continue accessing the garden plans that you have produced after your 7 day free trial has expired and you will receive the emails that remind you when to sow and plant. When you come to plan next year's garden the Garden Planner will remember your garden layout and where crops have been grown in previous years. This enables you to quickly produce next year's plans without having to re-draw your layout. In addition the Garden Planner shows you where to avoid placing plants for crop rotation, based on your previous years' plans.

Q. Can I share my account with others?A. Our Terms and Conditions only allow people in the same household to share one Garden Planner account. We respectfully ask that you do not share your account details with others. Special accounts are available for educational organisations who need multiple-user access or more plans per year. Please Contact Us for further details.

Emails and Privacy

Q. Will I receive junk email if I sign up for an account?A. You will only receive emails you opt-in to, such as our newsletter with the personalised reminders of when to sow and plant the vegetables in your garden. We also send two introductory emails to help you learn to use our site and reminders if your subscription is about to expire. We never sends spam or give your details to any third party except where you selected an option to receive offers or we are required to by law or for the normal operation of our business. Full details are set out in our Privacy Policy.

Subscription and Payment

Q. How do I subscribe?A. Just start the Garden Planner, then log in and click the 'Subscribe or View Account Status' button.

Q. How much does a subscription to the Garden Planner cost?A. Your first 7 days are free and a subscription does not automatically start. After that it costs $29 for a one-year subscription to the Garden Planner or $45 for two years. School accounts are available for teachers who wish to use the Garden Planner with their students at a cost of $45 for up to five classes per year. Please use our Contact Form for further details about school accounts.

Q. If I subscribe before my 7-day trial ends, will I lose my remaining 'free' days?A. No, we add your one or two year subscription on to the remaining days of your free trial.

Q. How can I be sure that it's safe to use my credit card to subscribe to the Garden Planner?A. We use PayPal, the leading provider of secure credit card transactions on the Internet, for our credit card processing. Our site is secured by industry standard technology (see the padlock symbol when you navigate to our Subscription pages.) We never store any credit card details on our servers. If you still have concerns then you have the option of using a PayPal account or even sending us a cheque.

Q. Will you continue to take subscription payments out of my bank account each year?A. No, we simply send you a reminder asking you to re-subscribe via our website.

The Garden Planner

Q. Do I need to install any software?A. No, the Garden Planner simply uses Adobe Flash player, version 9 or above, which is installed on well over 98% of all internet-connected computers. Adobe Flash works with Windows PCs, Apple Macs and Linux, in all major browsers. If you need to update your version of Flash player, then you will be notified when you launch the Garden Planner, with a link to the page for the free download.

Q. When I click to start the Garden Planner it doesn't workA. As long as you have tried waiting for the Garden Planner to load then you probably need to give your computer a bit of a helping hand. Our Technical Help page gives all the details you need with practical steps and details of how to contact us so that we can help you get it working.

Q. Do you have a stand-alone version of the Garden Planner that I can install?A. No, at the moment we only provide an online version so that all our customers are using our most up-to-date software, we can keep backups of the data and the system can send you reminders of when to sow and plant your crops by email.

Q. Can the Garden Planner adjust planting times for the Southern Hemisphere?A. Yes, when you specify that you live in a country in the Southern Hemisphere the planting seasons are adjusted automatically.

Q. A vegetable I plant is not shown in the Garden PlannerA. In order to keep the loading speed of the Garden Planner to a minimum we can only include common vegetables and fruit in the Garden Planner. If one that you plant isn't there then you can:

Choose the closest vegetable to it and use that icon instead. You can then double-click it to specify a 'variety' of that vegetable.

Use one of the generic vegetables we have provided such as 'Other', 'Herb', 'Fruit Bush' or 'Tree' and give it a variety name for the new plant.

If we receive a lot of requests for a particular vegetable it may be added in the future so feel free to Contact Us if you wish.

Q. What is the difference between 'Spacing' and 'Spacing in Rows'?A. This is often something that confuses people and gardeners have many different opinions on it. A basic description is as follows:Spacing: the distance between plants when planted individually or in blocks.Spacing in rows: (the distance between plants down the row) x (the gap between rows).
By spacing plants closer in rows but the rows further apart it means that they still get the root space they need but they are easier to weed and harvest due to the gap between the rows.

Q. I want to grow more than one crop in the same space. Is that possible?A. Yes, just view the Succession Planting video on the start page of the Garden Planner for details of how to do this. You can also specify over-wintering crops this way.

Q. Why am I getting no sow/plant/harvest times for a vegetable I have added to my plan?A. Based on the frost dates you have chosen, our system has calculated that you do not have a long enough growing season to grow this crop. Please note that with protection such as cloches, a greenhouse, glasshouse or polytunnel you may still be able to grow it.

Problems

Q. My garden plan won't save. What should I do?A. Please follow the instructions on our Technical Help page.

Q. The Garden Planner runs slowly on my computerA. Try restarting your computer and making sure that other demanding programs are not running at the same time. The Garden Planner may slow down with very large garden plans but speed can be increased by using the Settings button on the toolbar and selecting to 'Show only end plants in rows and corner plants in blocks'. Alternatively a large garden or plot can be split into separate smaller plans.

Q. Scrolling is very slow on my garden planA. Again, try the steps mentioned above. Also, click and drag the scroll bar itself, rather than the end arrows.